You are seriously underestimating the sweeping potential that Chlorophyll alone gives. Let me give you an example... Stoutland. Take a look at this Pokemon. Without any playing experience, there is no way in the world that you would think that this Pokemon would make for a decent sweeper or cleaner in OU, but in reality it does, even with a mediocre Attack stat of 100. The CAP doesn't need many things to derail to the offensive role instead of the defensive with Chlorophyll, if we give it at least a decent Attack stat. Even with just its STABs, HP Fire, and Rapid Spin and LO or lefties, it will make a very good offensive Pokemon even with only 100 Atk and 70 SpA. And don't start listing me examples of what can wall it, as this is not the point. The point is that the CAP would be able to hit hard and outspeed a lot of stuff, while still hitting the Steel-types that are supposed to counter it with HP Fire. It may not be the best offensive Pokemon around, but it will surely make for a good offensive combo with Venusaur. As you can see it is not so easy to avoid going on the offensive with an ability so offensive natured and this is the problem. Even Tangrowth of all things uses offensive Chlorophyll sets over defensive Chlorophyll sets the few times that it sees use on sun teams. And he has 50 Base fucking Speed.

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I bet Stoutland would be close to useless without Superpower, Wild Charge, Fire / Ice Fang, and Pursuit. Stoutland is effective because it has an usable Attack stat with very good coverage; since in the threat discussion it was agreed upon (I think) to not give it much coverage, your example is not overly convincing to me. We can tune the stats of CAP5 to reduce the Hidden Power viability on it quite easily, if we don't want it to be able to deal with walls.

I will say it to you once again because you don't get it or because you choose to ignore it on purpose. There are many ways that the CAP can counter Lati@s in rain if we go with Harvest! Be it with decent special bulk (90 HP / 90 SpD) and Sitrus Berry, with great Speed, good Special bulk (95 HP / 110 SpD / 115 Spe) and LumRest, with decent special bulk, good Attack and Speed and Salac Berry (110 Atk / 90 HP / 90 SpD / 100 Spe), or finally with huge special bulk (100 HP / 140 SpD) and LumRest, it can be done! Please do the calcs about the examples i gave you and don't bring up again the ''with Harvest the CAP can't counter Latios without huge special bulk'' argument as it is false. So between countering Lati@s in sun and only checking them in rain and sand with Chlorophyll and countering them in every weather, which would you choose? The winner is obvious, Harvest!

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This is not really aimed to counter your argument, but are we really willing to give CAP a 115 Speed stat, Pursuit, and Rapid Spin? Looks really a perfect Spinning machine to me...that even ignoring the ability it's very attractive for every team based around SR removal (not necessarily Sun). I would think twice before using weird stat arrays just to grant CAP5 the ability to run LumRest, since we could end up breaking other aspects of the pokemon that have seen a lower amount of discussion. This is not against Harvest, just I'd be more careful before proposing or even considering an unconditional base 115 Spe in your examples.

Moderator

Mentioning random examples is not a good way to compare the potential power of one ability to that of another. That method is practically guaranteed to be biased in favour of, well, anything. Your examples include Jirachi, which CAP 5 may not even be able to crack well enough to avoid Body Slam paralysis, and Terrakion, which is only really an argument against Chlorophyll, and even then, the reversal happens only when sun is up. You call that a balance issue, but Chlorophyll supporters will call it incentive to get the sun up and keep it up.

This is in stark contrast to Cloud Nine and I don't think you appreciate how much potential for side effects this ability has. It's not very helpful against sand or hail, and might even help them, all in exchange for weakening a handful of physical attackers in sand and lowering the accuracy of a super effective move. Against rain, it only really hinders offensive Water-type attacks, which, surprise surprise, is not the only thing that rain or even offensive Water-type Pokemon in particular have going for them. At least Water Absorb would help against Scald, especially from Tentacruel, one of the things Cloud Nine supposedly helps better than Water Absorb or Natural Cure do (hint: Tentacruel still has Leftovers / Black Sludge recovery). Why are we even talking about Hurricane and Thunder? Is CAP 5 switching into Hurricane? Does Thunder missing really matter?

The biggest arguments for Cloud Nine over the other shortlisted abilities seem to reflect an overly simplistic view of how weather works. Rain and sand are versatile, and that is why they're so successful. Personally, I'd love to have a Cloud Nine Grass-type on a sand team, considering how great Grass is for helping sand-immune types and staving off rain threats. Even on a rain team, it could be a quick stop to Kingdra. I don't see that kind of incentive to use CAP 5 on a sun team, unless we go the Genesect route.

I'm going to throw my featherweight support behind Flower Gift at this late stage.

The main reservations I see about it are those concerned that it might see CAP5 either underpowered out of sun or broken in it.

I think that the latter is highly improbable - it should not be forgotten that CAP5 will likely be of no more than mediocre physical tankiness if it wants to take on Lati@s while staying balanced, and is weak to both Mach Punch and Ice Shard. It also suffers a 4x weakness to U-turn, whose (often scarfed) users it may not be able to outspeed. It's hardly going to be unstoppable. Furthermore, according to our threatlist it's probably not going to pack much coverage besides its STAB options, limiting its overall offensive presence. A +1 to Atk and SpD is in all probability not going to break CAP5.

The former is certainly more possible - it's easier to be underpowered than broken - but I also highly doubt it. CAP stat spreads tend to be devised with the utmost care and sensitivity (yes Aurumoth is probably a bit overpowered, but it's an exception) - I've been lurking intermittently since Voodoom, and the amount of thought that tends to go into them always impresses me. If misgivings about a boosting ability come down to no more than questions of balance, I would suggest that they're misguided, for I have no doubt the participants in this project can devise a stat spread that makes Flower Gift CAP5 pretty good in general, but great under sun.

That's what's needed. A CAP5 that could fulfill the roles it needs to fulfill reliably, regardless of weather conditions, would be a valuable asset to sun teams, sure, but if it were to develop a significant presence in the metagame in general it would risk failing to ultimately fulfill the concept and significantly impact their overall usage relative to other team types (usage, zero-sum game, remember?). A CAP5 that could under normal circumstances perform such roles capably but unspectacularly, but truly excel under sun, would be far preferable. Flower Gift sees Sun boost CAP5's SpD and Atk. I'm sure I don't need to point out that these are exactly the stats that are going to help it function as a pivot against specially offensive threats, a counter to Lati@s and Politoed, and a spinner that can reliably kick the asses of OU's premier spinblockers. These are all the roles it's been determined that CAP5 needs to fill for sun teams, and with them covered sun will find itself on much more level footing with other playstyles.

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I'd just like to say that I completely agree with this fantastic post. I was going to add some more support for Flower Gift later but this post pretty much says everything I wanted to say and more, so I guess I don't have to bother? :D

I really could give two hoots about intended effects vs actual effects. Yes, our threatlist (Bugs, Fires, etc) all still beat us regardless of something like Sitrus Recovery, and all probably still do even with Lum Rest.

That's not my problem. My problem with Harvest is that it turns a lot of things that should be neutral matchups into wins for CAP5. It essentially makes everything that doesn't beat it lose to it, more or less. You claim Jirachi can just U-turn. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but Jirachi only used U-turn on 22% of sets in January, most of which, I'd bet are choiced, so that's not a big factor as you'd likely know that already.

The problem is you can come in on SpDef Rachi and, given the right bulk, never fear dying from Flinch Hax. Some may say that's a good thing. I say that's crap. Jirachi is supposed to be a neutral matchup, if not worse for CAP5. Harvest enables CAP5 to muscle through.

Jirachi was an arbitrary example. This could have a similar effect on a Scarf Terrakion locked in on Stone Edge. What was once a scary thing for CAP5 to switch into now becomes easier. Is this an excellent thing for Sun teams? Sure. It's also excellent for ALL teams. Beyond that, it's also not something we said we should threaten in our Threats discussion.

In short, Harvest affects way too many outcomes that initially would be neutral. This makes CAP5 into general goodstuff and while it will be tied to Sun because of Harvest's improved rate of activation, the list of things threatened by CAP5 will far exceed the things we said we wanted to threaten back in Threats. That's a problem I think we should avoid. Under Sun, if we are not exceedingly careful with Harvest, CAP5 will win way too many matchups for my taste, considering neither Toed nor TTar can switch in to debuff Harvest.

I am legitimately worried Harvest is too good in general to serve the purpose of this CAP.

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This is the first well explained argument i see against Harvest, so props for that! However, as you said, with careful decisions later we can avoid the things you mentioned from happening. For example if we give to the CAP low physical bulk, like for example 90 HP / 60 Def, then everything that attacks from the physical side with a neutral attack is going to hurt the CAP a lot and easily OHKO with super effective attacks. So my opinion is that Harvest allows the CAP to deal the best with the threats we want it to cover while offering some versatility, which is good for sun teams, and is not hard to prevent from derailing the CAP from its goal in later stages.

Finally, i still can't get at all why you still support Cloud Nine. Abilties that don't risk derailing it from its goal, such as Natural Cure and Water Absorb, completely outclass it. Water Absorb does whatever Cloud Nine does but better, and Natural Cure fixes something that stats can't, status. As i already stated and i never saw a good answer from you, strong water hits are easy to take with good special bulk. Notice how i say good, not immense. For example with 100 HP / 100 SpD and full investment the CAP is never 2HKOed from rain boosted Hydro Pump after SR from Specs Keldeo, the strongest special rain abuser. So if you want to support something that is not outclassed and doesn't risk breaking the CAP or derailing it from its goal, chose an ability that is not outclassed, such as the two abilities i mentioned in this paragraph.

@Gang4lF

I agree with you that if we make a speedy Harvest mon we probably shouldn't give it Pursuit.

Moderator

My point in supporting Cloud Nine over Water Absorb or Natural Cure is that I think Cloud Nine helps Sun more in comparison to other weathers than Water Absorb or Natural Cure do.

i.e. let's say Cloud Nine, as a percentage of total helping, helps Sun 40%, Weatherless 30%, Sand 20%, Rain 10%. I would then view Water Absorb as helping Sand more than it currently does, hence the percentage impact on Sun is smaller, even if it's better for Sun, because, well, it's also better for everyone.

Natural Cure and Water Absorb both fall into this category, where I fear they help Sun marginally less relative to other playstyles than Cloud Nine helps.

Obviously Flower Gift, Harvest, and Chlorophyll don't suffer from this problem. Indeed they help Sun comparatively to other weathers much more than Cloud Nine. My fears come from filling the wrong roles for Sun or having potential balance issues. For reasons I already expressed about Harvest, I'm not too keen on it. I'm even less keen on Chlorophyll. Of the Sun abilities, I most support Flower Gift, though I too have reservations there.

EDIT: Also, Water Absorb isn't even on the shortlist, so we should stop talking about it lol

Moderator

Countering Lati@s in all weathers and switching in safely against Politoed seems as a recipe for breaking sun to you? Sorry then, but this is the project that the community decided to work on. These are the threats that we agreed that the CAP should cover, and between Harvest and Chlorophyll you can't deny that Harvest just does it better.

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Whoa, time out. This attitude is just very wrong. Community consensus can be established in a step, but until we put it to a vote, it's not "the project we've decided on." There was no vote at the end of the threats list, and this is a very dangerous attitude to have. We should constantly be reevaluating our goals for the project to see if a) they're in line with the concept and b) they have a power level acceptable for the OU meta. you can't just throw "community consensus" in my face and go "so there!" Personally, if we get to Movepool and I feel the CAP is sufficiently powerful with its stats and abilities, I will not hesitate to "throw the abort switch" so to speak and argue against Rapid Spin, even though I have felt from the start it was necessary for the concept to succeed. I would rather have a failed Pokemon than a broken Pokemon, especially so soon after Aurumoth.

Note that I am not necessarily threatening to do this if Harvest wins, but it definitely ups the likelihood, because as Reach pointed it out is a far stronger ability than Chloro.

Oh and I really do think we should take Water Veil off the "discussed" list. It's got a leg up on Natural Cure because a) it's more specific, leading to a less "generalized" cap5 and instead one focused on its roles on a sun team, and b) it doesn't force the CAP to switch out after being burned by Toed, so it can actually be an effective answer 100% of the time instead of being forced out 15% of the time to something that probably doesn't enjoy coming in on toed very much

These abilities stand as the most-intelligently supported and thoughtful options for our Primary Ability.

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This has been a very good discussion overall, so thanks to everyone for making my job easy. Each of the five abilities on the slate will put CAP on a desirable path forward, so I'm personally very pleased with this list of options. I am excited to see which Primary Ability we choose; from the looks of things, it will be a close vote!

If jas61292 has no objections to the slate, I say we pack this thread up and move on down the road. See you all in a week or so for secondary ability!

Moderator

So, I was thinking about posting again before this thread closed, but I don't think I really would have had much to add that my previous posts didn't say. I don't think there is anything not on the slate that really got enough intelligent support to deserve to be there. What I have spent a lot of time thinking about is what is on there and whether or not it should be.

Now, if you have read this thread, you know I am not a fan of Harvest. But with that said, the reasons for that are despite the positives it has. I recognize the upsides, and while I personally do not think it is a good idea, it is not my role as TL to make such a decision. The fact is it does some great things for the concept, and it should be up to the rest of you to decide if it is worth it.

However, I don't think I can say the same thing about Cloud Nine. The reasons I posted the above paragraph was to show the difference between where I think the TL should and should not be getting involved. Honestly, while the posts for Cloud Nine were well worded, when it comes right down to it, they failed to show how it actually helps with this concept at all. The main argument I have been seeing in favor is about taking water moves better, but we resist water. We shouldn't need this, and even if we do, if we weaken water, we are doing nothing to actually take the strongest hits of our opponents better, which will be the Ice coverage. In the meantime, Cloud Nine makes this Pokemon infinitely more attractive to non-Sun teams. It weakens the fire attacks we want to lose to, and disables sun based abilities. Overall, I see many negatives, and almost no positives.

So yeah, I'm going to make the first use of these fancy new powers to cut Cloud Nine from the list. Its a cool ability that sounds attractive for countering other weathers, but it really does absolutely nothing for the direction we have taken with this concept.